Who'd Ha Thunk It?
by Manchester
Summary: Andrew actually comes up with an idea. Surely, the end of all is nigh. “Don’t call me Shirley!”
1. Chapter 1

**It was a dark and stormy night.**

**In the middle of January, Cleveland was having a terrible weather week of intense cold accompanied with strong winds and heavy snow, and right now the entire city was suffering from a big winter storm consisting of freezing rain mixed with sleet.**

**Any cop can tell you from personal experience that bad weather puts a literal damper on crime. Being in a somewhat similar line of work, the Scooby Gang had learned this also applied to their occupation of defending the world from the dark forces. Right now on the Cleveland Hellmouth, the entire city's population of vampires, demons, and other unearthly creatures were holed up snug in their lairs, watching the entire DVD collection of Full House, or as they referred to the show, "Yummy Munchies with Mary-Kate and Ashley."**

**After checking the Weather Channel to find out the bad weather was forecasted to last at least another day plus that temperatures were going to plunge further, and contemplating having to chip off icicles hanging from the Slayers' ears when they came back home after a freezing night of unsuccessful demon hunting, Xander Harris had declared a rare patrol night off for the girls. As a result, the entire house was debating with utmost civility, hushed voices, and gentle tempers the question of the moment: What movie would they watch tonight?**

"**ORLANDO!"**

"**LEONARDO!"**

"**ORLANDO!"**

"**LEONARDO!"**

"**Mark Hamill."**

**Pause.**

"**SHUT UP, ANDREW!"**

**Outside the living room, Xander winced as twenty young women ranging in age from thirteen to nineteen simultaneously shouted with Slayer lung power at the only other male in the Jenny Calendar Memorial House for Gifted Women.**

**The one-eyed former carpenter's mug of hot chocolate (with tiny marshmallows, of course) vibrated in his hand from the decibel level coming from the living room of the house. Pausing in the hallway, Xander gulped his drink, and tried to think of something to distract the girls before (a) they folded, spindled, and mutilated the only person in the house who could cook a decent meal and (b) they finally decided on something that would take another three hours-plus chunk out of his lifetime. Also, the Sunnydale survivor was quite sure that listening **_**again**_** to Celine Dion would finally make his brain explode.**

"**Hi, girls."**

**Twenty female heads turned as one and gazed with predator sharpness at the lanky 26-year-old man with an eye-patch ambling into the living room. Xander knew quite well that every Slayer could hear him breathing with a towel wrapped around his head in a room at the other end of the house, but he announced his presence anyway, with an easy smile on his face that only increased his crush quotient among a third of the group.**

**Xander stopped in the middle of the crowded room, looking around for a free chair or another place to sit, and raised his mug for another gulp of chocolately goodness. There were muffled giggles from at least a dozen girls as his cup came down, and the man raised an inquiring eyebrow. Several girls laughed out loud at this, and pointed at their own upper lips with a delicate finger. Xander rubbed his face with his free hand, and looking at his stained fingers, he smiled at the remains of what had been a cocoa mustache on his upper lip. **_**You've still got it, kid.**_

**Quite sure that he now had everyone's attention without demanding it, Xander walked over to the picture window of the living room and pulled aside the curtain to stare out at the ice storm. Sleet rattled against the window, and the man who had been born and raised in sunny California let the curtain fall back and turned to face the people in the room. Shivering theatrically, Xander said in a musing voice that carried across the entire room, "Boy, it was never like this in Sunnydale."**

**Eyes brightened among the girls as they realized Xander was going to tell stories.**

**And so he did, about Sunnydale and what had happened there during seven years. Of the Scooby Gang, with their names that everyone in the room knew by heart: Buffy, Willow, Giles, Faith, Oz, Dawn, Cordelia, Tara, Joyce, Anya. There were other names: Angel and Angelus, Spike, Principal Snyder, Harmony, Dru. Still more names. the Master, the Judge, the Mayor, the First Evil.**

**Slayers sat mesmerized in their seats, listening to triumphs and sorrows, victory and defeat, laughter and tears. Total friendship and vicious family fights. Heartbreak and forgiveness. Life and death.**

**Xander Harris quietly talked, joked, whispered, laughed, and passed on what had happened in his hometown before its destruction. All while standing in the living room and wearing the sweater one of the Slayers' mothers had knitted for him as a Christmas present, a bit baggy in bright red and white yarn and having a repeated design of a pair of horizontal stripes holding outlines of various objects. One stripe showed reindeer, sleighs, and snowflakes. The other stripe showed stakes, crosses, and holy water bottles.**

**As everyone listened to Xander now talking about the various Big Bads the Scooby Gang had faced, there was almost total silence from his audience in the living room, save for a single part of the space. From a corner, there came the sound of faint munching noises.**

**A sudden caller appearing in the doorway of the living room would have seen it crammed with twenty females sitting next to each other in various chairs, sofas, and the floor, one man standing before the window, and another man tucked in an armchair in a corner, with his own private bubble of space separating him from the girls. About Xander's age, but looking much less mature, this pasty-faced man was steadily consuming a big bowl of popcorn with a look of awe on his face directed at the other man.**

**Andrew Wells, fellow Sunnydale survivor and tag-along (much to Xander's exasperation), current cook of the house, Star Wars devotee, comic book fanatic, and possessor of evident-to-Slayers "geek funk" tossed another handful of popcorn into his mouth and savored his self-created Mos Eisley Cantina spray-on sauce that everyone in the house referred to as "that yucky stuff Andrew makes in a pot we have to beat to death with a shovel and bury twenty feet in the backyard when he's done with it." Suddenly, this man frowned thoughtfully, and after digging a popcorn kernel out from between his front teeth with a ragged fingernail, he leaned forward in his chair and opened his mouth.**

**Just when Xander was getting to the good part in a story about the First Evil, a dorky voice interrupted him. "Hey, X-man, I just had an idea."**

**Xander looked across the room in irritation at Andrew. The one-eyed man's expression was a lot nicer than those on the faces of every girl in the room. All of them were glaring at Andrew with a level of fury not seen since last summer when PMS day coincided with the occasion the kitchen freezer broke down and all of the Rocky Road ice cream melted.**

**Andrew, of course, paid absolutely no attention to a roomful of killers giving him looks of death. After all, this was a guy who had once asked a male vampire in game face if he could measure the demon's fangs to see if incisor length was related to any other body part length. (Yep, that one.) Instead, the King of Dweebs burbled on with unconcern, "I was only around for the First Evil, with the Slayers-In-Training and the Scythe and the big hole in the ground---"**

"**I know, Andrew, I was there," sighed the man with a single eye. "You said you had an idea?" Xander asked that to get it over with. **_**Please let him not mention light sabers or the Force.**_

"**Oh. Yeah." Andrew grabbed another handful of popcorn, crammed it all in his mouth and munched away with chipmunk cheeks as he gathered his thoughts.**

**At the corner of his eye, Xander noticed a glint of metal. He made a 'don't you dare!' waggle with his forefinger down at his side and saw Jennifer Adamson, a sixteen-year-old Slayer, give a world-class pout as she slipped her throwing knife back into her boot sheath. She would just have to be disappointed. Xander didn't feel like spackling over a knife puncture in the wall behind Andrew. Not to mention having to replace the armchair Andrew was sitting in due to the nerd's loss of sphincter control.**

**The sound of a satisfied gulp drew Xander's attention back to the other man. Wearily, the leader of the Cleveland Slayers prepared to listen to something totally preposterous, stupid, ludicrous, and idiotic.**

**A couple of minutes later, a dazed Xander prepared to say something he would have bet serious money against ever occurring. **_**Hell, I would have bet my entire stash of Twinkies. This has got to be the first sign of not just your run-of-the-mill apocalypse, but THE Apocalypse. With a capital T, H, E, and A.**_

"_**Andrew. That might actually work."**_


	2. Chapter 2

"Let's do it."

Xander, Buffy, Dawn, and Faith stopped laughing their heads off at achieving a quadruple puppy-dog-eyes gaze (Dawn had coached Faith for hours) that had made an extremely reluctant Rupert Giles rub Willow's baby bump. Everyone in the room stared at the red-haired witch sitting in an easy chair, with her blouse having the last two buttons open to show where her innie was soon going to turn into an outie.

Willow Rosenberg calmly looked around the room as she gently stroked the small bulge that showed she was pregnant. Her auburn hair gleamed in the light of the winter sun shining through one of the upper windows of the centuries-old Scottish castle that was now the European training center of the International Watchers' Council. While extensive renovations had modernized the sprawling castle to current living standards, including power, plumbing, and heating, pains had been taken to keep the look of the living areas matching the building's history.

This meant that any past inhabitant of the castle over the last half-millennium somehow visiting their home again, to be precise this exact room, would have been startled by the comfortable furnishings of the present, but they would have been reassured by the familiar massive exposed roof beams a yard thick, the room paneled in polished oak, and the numerous bladed weapons currently displayed on the walls, all of these clean, oiled, and razor-sharp.

Xander paid no particular attention to the ready-for-use weapons hung on the walls. Instead, he moved to Willow's chair and crouched down beside it, both hands resting on the armrest for balance. A worried brown eye gazed into those of his bestest bud.

"Wils, you can't mean it. I just thought you and the gang would enjoy hearing Andrew's running off at the mouth, especially since He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-But-His-Initials-Are-R-And-G stuck me with the Lord of the Dorks."

Willow giggled at the outraged throat clearing coming from behind Xander, and she reached out with her hand to pick up Xander's right hand to bring it to her lips for a kiss on his fingers. "Xander, I do mean it. Believe it or not, Andrew came up with something that could conceivably succeed."

"Oh, great, just because you're now pregnant, you have to use the c-word?" Xander stood up and pretended to give a mock shudder, and then he continued with a more serious expression, while gesturing at his friend's exposed stomach. "Willow, what about Junior there?"

Her eyes sparkling, Willow replied, "It's going to be a girl, Xander."

"What?! How can you poss--- Oh. Right. Big honkin' witchie-poo powers."

Xander's last comment was nearly drowned out by the simultaneous squeals of the Summers sisters as they shouldered him out of the way in their dash towards Willow. Both women stopped at the sides of the armchair to bend down to fling their arms around the witch for a lengthy hug. Finally, all three came up for air, blinking back happy tears.

"I'm going to be Auntie Dawn!" giggled the youngest woman.

"Hah!" barked the older sister, tossing back her blonde hair. "Betcha I teach her to say Auntie Buffy first!"

Xander felt Rupert Giles come up beside him and turned his head towards the man who was now the head of the IWC as the Englishman affectionately placed his hand on his son-in-heart's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. The two men watched in the perfect happiness that is given only to those who know their family will increase as the three women startled babbling about babies.

After a few moments, Giles took his hand off Xander's shoulder and absently removed his glasses to peer at the woman in the chair. "Regarding names, Willow, just what are you going to call your child?"

Willow smiled at her family and softly said, "Tara Joyce Rosenberg."

There was a pause, as all there quietly thought of those they had loved that had gone on to the undiscovered country.

Xander took several steps back to sit on the sofa with the fourth woman in the room who had been watching with amusement for the last few minutes. The man's hand, the same that Willow had kissed, was clasped in Faith's hand as she performed the same action as the red-haired witch in bringing it up to her lips for a loving kiss, and then the brunette placed Xander's hand on her own pregnant belly that was well over twice the size of Willow's bulge.

The steady look Faith gave Willow was returned in kind, but there was nothing to be seen of jealousy, nor dislike, nor any other unworthy emotion. Instead, both women gazed at each other in total affection, united in their love of Xander and the children he had given them.


	3. Chapter 3

Any person in her life who had encountered Faith both before and after she had married Xander a year ago -- Slayer, Watcher, or otherwise -- had to restrain their astonishment at the changes in her personality. Instead of the normal 'wild child' attitude of "I'm the baddest girl in town and don't you damn well forget it or I'll bite off your head and puke down your throat," she was now….more. More mature. More secure. It was even possible for people to use the word 'adult' in Faith's presence without fearing she would give the speaker heart surgery by going in through their feet.

Faith had confided to Buffy (itself a staggering sign of her emotional development) that she had personally been 'weirded out' at the changes in her character. At first, she had feared that being in love with Xander and being loved by him was going to turn her into a wimpy version of Faith: weak, timid, unassertive, and unworthy. Faith had slowly discovered and learned that she was loved for all of herself and she could love with all of her self. All of the bad and the good in her lifetime had made her no one else but Faith, and Xander Harris was more than willing to live the rest of his life with Faith, knowing that included all of the bad and the good. For the first time in her existence, she stood on something stable and she could look ahead to sharing a lifetime journey, knowing someone would be there.

Naturally, several months after their marriage, when Xander and Faith had joyously informed their family of her pregnancy, there came along something that would test this.

Over the last few years, Willow had glumly thought that while Buffy's unsuccessful relationships could be described as 'spectacular disasters', her own failures at finding a permanent liaison with someone resembled having an ingrown toenail removed: painful, but dull. The relationship with Kennedy during and after the Sunnydale collapse had just been two people caught up in a stressful situation and trying to lose themselves into each other. Ordinary life had gradually driven them apart, so that her lover had in the end moved out to as far away as she could get, to the San Francisco Slayers House. Various other dating tries, both attempted by herself and with help from her friends and family, had never really worked out.

Willow had gradually lost herself in her work for the International Watchers' Council in helping the Slayers and continuing her magical studies, happy to have an excuse to not really try to find true love, or at least authentic affection. Unfortunately, someone was not at all pleased by this.

Years ago, after trying to cause immeasurable devastation over the pain of Tara's murder, Willow had been sent by Giles to England to be examined by the witches' coven at Devon to see if it was possible for her to control her powers. To their dismay, Willow's magic was permanently tainted by her birth and life on the Sunnydale Hellmouth, just as any normal human's health would be contaminated by living in a highly polluted environment. To be cured of her magical taint, Willow would have to go through an extremely dangerous ceremony, in which she would offer her total self -- her mind, her soul, her life -- in service to the source of all magic: Gaia. Mother Earth. The World.

She did so. And she was cured. Not just cured, but noticed and blessed, by the Goddess Herself, to do the work of the Mother of All. Willow Rosenberg would, now and forever, be Gaia's representative to humanity and she would be given the immense power that came with the position. She would be the Red Witch, the most formidable sorceress in millennia. However, there would be a price. In order to manifest the fertility of the world, Willow was gently but firmly informed she must have children, and it was not a good idea to give Mother Nature the excuse of "But I can't find anyone!"

A rain of several hundred thousand frogs inside the Scottish castle out of nowhere, all of them tiny, neon green, and hopping everywhere with piping cries had been a hint half a year ago that a certain deity wanted grandchildren. Now.

After Willow had stopped freaking out over the f-creatures, she accepted her responsibilities and she began a logical plan. The first step was to put all of the frogs she could catch back into their natural habitant, much to the relief of the other inhabitants of the castle, who were now stuffing cotton balls into their ears to block out the cheerful "peep!" of the remainder of the legion of frogs who had momentarily escaped the round-up by hiding inside the castle walls.

Then, Willow had set out on her journey.

A month later, the Land-Rover came to a halt in front of a small cottage. A discussion then took place among the three women in the car.

"Ya really think Red is comin' back? She might be havin' second thoughts, considerin' how you celebrated her leavin', B."

"I was just waving goodbye with the rest of the Slayers!"

"Still kinda weird how weapons trainin' was moved from later in the day to just two minutes before she left. B, every Slayer had various items of cutlery in their hands when seein' Willow off. _You_ were wavin' a battleaxe!"

"Buffy was still sore about her shoes, Faith."

"Shut up, Dawn."

"What are you talkin' 'bout, Dawnie? I though everybody in the castle knows the four things nobody touches: Giles' glasses, my motorcycle, Xander's Hawaiian shirts, and Buffy's shoes."

"Shut up, Dawn."

"Our uninvited guests didn't know that."

"Shut up, Dawn."

"You mean she---"

"Shut up, Dawn."

"You remember her really fine brown calfskin Manolo Blahniks, with the buckle on the back, that said, 'do me, I'm yours'? The ones she wore on the dates when she was certain of getting some? The ones you haven't seen lately since she put them on in a hurry and found out too late that a couple of frogs were living in the left toes?"

"SHUT UP, DAWN!"

"Oh, yuck."

Faith, Dawn, and Buffy now got out of the Land-Rover that was part of the castle's transport section. All of them looked around in curiosity at the place they had spent the day driving to, down nearly all of Great Britain. It was a peaceful one-story thatched cob cottage a mile from a rural town in Devon, in a copse of trees and bushes, all bright green in late summer's glory. A graveled walk led from the road to the front door of the cottage, and all three women started up this.

Just as they were halfway to the cottage, the front door opened. Dawn brightened at the expectation of seeing Willow, only to be let down when a stranger stood in the doorway and then stepped out to walk towards them. The stranger, a stout woman in her sixties with a kind face over an impressive double chin, in a brown skirt above sturdy shoes and a wool sweater that had a pattern of green leaves and vines, had a welcoming smile on her face as she came towards her visitors while tying a blue scarf over her hair. She was the perfect picture of a mature Englishwoman in her country house.

Not that this made Buffy and Faith relax the slightest. Both casually maneuvered to walk side-by-side in front of Dawn. Just before stopping to meet the woman, Dawn heard Buffy quietly say out of the corner of her mouth, "A good witch." Faith only nodded, with her own Slayer senses agreeing with the oldest Slayer, as Dawn peered over their shoulders.

"You must be Buffy, Dawn, and Faith," said the woman in a soft Devonshire accent, not shaking hands but giving them all a respectful nod. "I'm Constance Miller, and Miss Rosenberg has been staying with me for a few days. She's now in the garden, waiting for you." The Englishwoman waved a hand at another graveled path running off the main path to the left side of the cottage. "Just follow that. The Red Witch requested privacy, so I'll be off to the village. There's refreshments for all of you in the garden, if you want."

"Thank you very much," said Dawn politely, with Buffy and Faith echoing her. As the older woman headed past the three Americans, she stopped short by Faith and looked at the brunette, with a knowing expression on the witch's face. "May I?" asked the Wiccan.

Faith gave the woman the narrow-eyed stare of a wolf bitch wondering if an insolence should be allowed, and then the Slayer's face smoothed to calm acceptance as she nodded in permission.

The witch placed her right palm against Faith's midriff, on the faint bulge of her pregnancy, and the older woman murmured, "Blessed be."

As the three women walked around the cottage, leaving the witch on her way to the village, and following the path to the back, Faith muttered, "Red Witch, ha. You could hear the capital letters. The gal needs to have a serious noogie to keep her from gettin' a swelled head." Dawn had to giggle.

Buffy snorted. "You try that and Willow might shut down the Hormone Express permanently, instead of just for the last month."

"A girl has needs," smirked Faith. Then, her expression changed to one of longing. "Dammit, weekend visits by plane don't compare with havin' Red pop Xander over here from Cleveland every night to lick honey off my--"

"First crush, first crush, first crush!" chanted Dawn, sticking her fingers into her ears as she skipped ahead.

As the two older women walked and watched Dawn before them, Buffy brought up her right hand to give Faith a sympathetic back rub. Faith looked over in gratitude. Even though she and her husband had both agreed it was an extremely bad idea to have a pregnant Slayer on a Hellmouth, it was heartbreaking to be apart. She sighed, and touched her stomach. _Only 'cause we don't want you to be a weirdness magnet like your dad, li'l one. And he's gonna owe me a coupla thousand diaper changes._

_***************************************************************************************************_

_Author's Note: The phrase "heart surgery by going in through their feet" is a direct steal from a quote by Julie Andrews. Yep, Mary Poppins herself._


	4. Chapter 4

At last, they came to the garden, a proper British plot of neatly trimmed, colorful flowerbeds surrounding a mowed green lawn with an open-air gazebo in the middle. Inside the gazebo was a round wooden table covered by a cloth on which were pitchers of drinks, glasses, and several covered trays. There were four metal chairs around the table, one of them being occupied by a young red-haired woman in a green dress.

"Willow!" There was a momentarily Dawn-blur that ended up with her fiercely hugging the witch while that woman was still sitting down. Willow finally managed to get to her feet while Dawn was still hanging on. "Dawnie, do you mind….I want to greet them too."

Dawn reluctantly let go, her attention being diverted from Willow leaving the gazebo and the hugs the Wiccan gave Buffy and Faith to investigating what was on the trays on the table. "Sandwiches! Cakes! Cookies!" squealed the young woman, snaffling a particularly scrumptious roast-beef sandwich for herself.

The women outside the gazebo watched Dawn in amusement, though Faith cast a faintly puzzled glance at Willow. While affectionate, the embrace given by the witch to the dark-haired Slayer had been a little…. tentative? Interrupting her thoughts was Buffy's stern admonishment. "Dawn! Close your mouth when you eat!"

"Mmmmfff!" This comment from a full-mouthed Dawn was accompanied by a wave of her arm that signaled, "I'll obey my big sister for, oh, five seconds, and then I'll do what I want."

Rolling her eyes in exasperation, Buffy turned to a smiling Willow, and asked, "Wils, thanks for inviting us here, but you could have just come back to the castle. Er….you are coming back, right?"

"That….depends."

Buffy looked startled and a little worried. "On what?"

Willow turned to look at the brunette woman. "On Faith."

"Me?!" Her eyes opened wide with astonishment, Faith continued, "Willow, is there somethin' wrong? Did I do somethin'?"

"No, no. I'm just hoping for something….right." At this, Willow stepped forward to take Faith by her hand and guide her to the edge of the lawn by the gazebo. "Please, stay there."

As she said this, Willow took a few steps back from Faith and then the witch closed her eyes. After a couple of seconds, Willow's hair began to move on its own in the windless garden, and streaks of green appeared in her tresses. Eyes still closed, Willow stepped forward.

All of the other women heard a rustling sound coming from the ground and looked down. They saw the lawn exuberantly burst upward from its neatly trimmed look, growing into shaggy strands a foot long that energetically twisted and coiled, save where Willow was walking. There, the grass reverently swept over her feet.

Faith looked up to see Willow come to a stop within arm's reach. The witch opened her eyes. Despite all the unearthly and extraordinary things she had experienced in her life as a Slayer, Faith flinched.

Willow's normal human eyes of pupil, iris, and white had vanished; now, they consisted of pure, total green in every shade Faith could think of: emerald, olive, jade, and all imaginable names humans had given to that color. There was only a moment of Willow and Faith having their eyes meet. Then, the Red Witch did something that sent everyone else into total shock.

Willow Rosenberg knelt down on her knees before Faith, her back straight, and then she put her hands palm-down on the ground and leaned forward to place her forehead on top of Faith's shoes, with the witch relaxing her body into a posture of absolute submission lying on the ground.

Faith's mouth fell open in utter disbelief. She looked up from Willow to see Buffy gaping at them in identical amazement. A masticated piece of Dawn's sandwich dropped out of her wide-open mouth, falling to her plate with a plopping sound.

Faith worriedly looked down to see Willow still prostrate before her. Without thinking, the Slayer bent down to grab the witch by her shoulders and lift her from her unseemly demeanor. As soon as her hands touched Willow, Faith abruptly froze as her existence changed.

green, green, green

It was what all there was, an entire globe, planet, sphere --- and then Faith felt it all shift as attention was paid to her.

All of her became the focus of something so large that Faith felt she would be crushed by sheer awareness. As soon as she thought this, the weight (of the whole world, she thought wildly, trying not to faint) eased somewhat, though there was enough presence to fill all of her mind.

Faith was now conscious of being gently examined, both of her body and her soul, and then the presence began to dissipate. Just before it completely left, something was felt to cause the Slayer to burst into tears.

Approval. And something more maternal that Faith could never before remember in her life. On her forehead, she felt the lightest possible kiss of a mother to her beloved child.

Several minutes later, Faith spoke to Willow as they were all sitting at the gazebo's table.

"You want Xander's baby."

"DAWN! WHAT?!"

This came from Buffy first reacting to Dawn spitting an entire mouthful of cookie crumbs over her older sister, and then finally reacting to what Faith had said.

"She's quite right, Buffy." Willow gazed at her blonde friend. Thankfully to the others, she had regained her normal human eyes.

"But….but….but…." gabbled Buffy, pointing at Faith with a shaking finger.

"I think you broke her," grinned Dawn, the chance to get back at her sister taking precedence over going to pieces over what had been announced. Xander??? Pay close attention, everybody is going to want this prime gossip.

There was a faint crunching noise as Buffy grabbed the edge of the table with both hands and wood splintered under her grip. "You….married….pregnant!" snarled the diminutive woman at Faith.

Faith put on her most offensive smirk, saying, "I see that Cave-Buffy's payin' a visit. Glad ta meet ya."

Buffy sagged back in her chair, whimpering, "Please, no more jokes. Just what's going on? What happened to you, Faith, when you pulled Willow up?"

This sobered Faith, and gave Willow a chance to explain. "She met Gaia, Buffy. The Goddess Herself." Willow joyfully looked at Faith. "Mother Earth gave Faith Her personal favor and esteem."

Dawn and Buffy both stared at Faith, who pensively nodded and tried to explain. "I….I was told --- shown --- experienced love, guys. Full on, like a fire nozzle shoved into my ear and turned all the way up, blasted completely by love that knew everythin' and it didn't matter. The only time I felt anythin' like it was when I was around your mom --- before I went bad."

At these last words, Faith cast down her eyes, not daring to look at the Summers sisters. Even though she had been fully forgiven by them years ago for what she had done back in her dark time, there were things that still hurt too much to be easily mentioned.

A sisterly silent glance was shared between Buffy and Dawn, and they simultaneously leapt out of their chairs to descend upon Faith with a double-team hug. "Mom did love and forgive you, Faith," murmured Buffy, her face serious as she looked her fellow Slayer in the eyes from a nose-to-nose distance while embracing her.

"Damn straight," snuffled Dawn into Faith's hair, holding her in a hug that would have cut off the breath of any other woman not having Slayer strength. "Just like you'll love and forgive your kids, no matter what they do."

"I….was considered her kid, too?"

Buffy and Dawn now let go, standing over Faith looking up with tears in her eyes. The two sisters also had some moisture affecting their eyesight. Smiling, Dawn went back to her chair, as Buffy confided, "Faith, everyone in the Scooby Gang was one of her kids. Well. Maybe not Giles. But he was family, too."

The women in the gazebo were subdued, as all there remembered the most important female in their lives.

Of course, it had to end. Her face grim, Elizabeth Anne Summers stiffened to her full height (what there was of it), slowly turned around to eye her target, and intoned in a voice that would terrify Lucifer himself.

"Willow. Xander. Baby. Talk."

Willow Rosenberg, the Red Witch, wielder of magics unimaginable to the rest of humanity, more powerful than Merlin Ambrosius himself, just managed not to pee in her pants.


	5. Chapter 5

"Um….I decided to start at the beginning, when I first got….er…._serious _with a guy."

At least this didn't make Buffy frown harder at her. Looking around, Willow found a fascinated Dawn and an interested Faith listening intently. She continued, "So, I went looking for Oz."

"Oz!" blinked Buffy. "I haven't thought about him for a, a long time. Did you find him? Is he okay?"

"Yeah!" chimed in Dawn, looking at Faith, who shrugged. Back then, the brunette Slayer had met the laid-back musician only a few times and had not gotten to know him very well, listening to the others talking about the werewolf who had helped the Scooby Gang before she had come to Sunnydale. "Even though I know the memories are false, I liked being around him as a kid," finished Dawn.

"He's fine. He's a monk."

"_What?!_" choked Buffy and Dawn simultaneously.

"Yes," sighed Willow. "I found him in a Buddhist temple in a forested area near the India-Nepal border. He'd been there a few years, learning meditation techniques and other means of controlling his wolf nature. He also studied Buddhist philosophy and he became absorbed by it, so much that he converted to the religion completely, becoming a monk."

Buffy disbelievingly asked, "You mean just like the guys at airports, with the robes and the shaven heads?"

"Those are Hare Krishnans. But, yeah, that's pretty much how he looks like now."

"You know," said Dawn thoughtfully, "It isn't that hard picturing Oz being a monk. I always considered him the most peaceful of us, despite turning into a wolf on the three nights of the full moon."

"He hasn't done that in years, Dawn. He's happy there, and he gave me his blessing and told me to tell you and the others of the Scooby Gang that he wishes us all the best."

"Oh, you talked to him?" asked a surprised Buffy. "What'd he say when you asked him about….um….your reasons for being there?"

"I think you meant Red shoulda said straight out she was considerin' a return of the bouncin' bedsprings with her first dude," chuckled Faith.

"_FAITH!_" shrieked Buffy, looking at her friend since high school whose face was now the color of her hair.

"I never….got that far, thank the Goddess. You see, the Buddhist vows in the sect he joined include pacifism, reverence for all living things, which resulted in him being the only known vegetarian werewolf, and….and…." Willow trailed off, apparently seeing something on the tabletop that required her full attention.

"And _what_?" demanded all the other women simultaneously.

Willow mumbled, "And celibacy."

Several minutes later, when at last the howls of mirth died down, Dawn lifted her face out of her cupped hands, wiping away tears of laughter off her cheeks, and declared, "The romance curse on the Girls of Old Sunnydale High is still happening, I see."

Buffy snapped to her sister, "You're not doing any better!"

Dawn stuck her tongue out at Buffy.

Ignoring the byplay between the Summers sisters, Faith looked at a resigned Willow and said, "Hey, Red, I got a question. One I've been wonderin' 'bout your magic for a while, and now I'd like to ask it."

Willow raised an expectant eyebrow and nodded for Faith to go on.

"You've got these major mojo powers, right? Can't you just wave your hands and conjure up someone you can do the nasty with?"

The witch didn't seem offended at this question. She just looked calmly at Faith, and asked totally out of the blue, "Did you ever see the Disney animated movie Aladdin?"

"Huh? Yeah, I seen it on TV and tape. What's that got to do with anythin'?"

"Do you remember from the movie the three things the genie said he couldn't do with his magic?"

Faith looked blank at Willow's question, glancing at Buffy and Dawn to see if they knew. The youngest Summers sister opened her mouth to say hesitantly, "I think….he couldn't bring anyone back from the dead, kill anybody,….or cause true love."

Willow nodded her head. "The last applies here. True love is one of the most powerful forces in the world, being part of humanity's free will, and the only acceptable ways to get it are to have it bestowed on you, or to _work_ for it. Trying to get it the easy way by magic or force means it will never happen in any satisfactory way, possibly at a terrible cost. I _could_ use my magic to get any man to fall in love with me, or just make them want to have sex with me to get pregnant. But there _would_ be a price. My soul would be damned, my child might turn out to be evil, and those are just the _least_ of what could happen."

"Okay, gotcha. No magic at all, just stuff like takin' out an ad in the paper saying 'Hot redhead seeks total sensitive stud to put bun in oven.'"

Willow pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ignore the snickers of Dawn and Buffy over Faith's comment.

"So, what happened then, after seeing Oz?" asked Buffy, trying to move things along out of the gutter.

Relieved, Willow continued. "I came back to the West and started doing research, which included talking with other lesbians with children. I finally realized that there was no real guarantee that even if I could find a man I wanted to have children with, that I could go through with it. I….am what I am, and the price to change that might just be too high. So….that led to the next step."

"I think I know," announced Dawn, carrying on at Willow's smile, "You considered a sperm bank!"

_Thump_.

"Bad Dawnie."

_Thump, thump_.

"Bad Dawnie."

_Thump, thump, thump_.

"Bad, bad Dawnie."

Buffy finally stopped beating her forehead against the top of the table and glowered at her sister. "It's going to take _weeks_ to get that out of my brain!"

Dawn gave Buffy a smirk that Faith rated a 9.4. "It was only logical."

"Logic means nothing compared to an eeeeuuuuwwww factor!"

"Can we get this back to me?" overrode Willow in a somewhat frosty tone. "Buffy, I'm sorry you're finding this icky, but it seemed the last option to have a baby."

"Who did you get? Was it a Noble prize winner? An athlete? Does he have good teeth?" Dawn bounced in her chair, spewing out her questions.

"I didn't get anyone, Dawn." The atmosphere in the gazebo now turned to total seriousness as Willow seemed to shrink in her chair, her voice lowering to a whisper. "I….I just couldn't go through with it. To pick out something from someone I will never know….no tenderness, no care, no….love. That needs to come with a child."

There was a painful silence, as Buffy and Dawn regarded their friend with concern. Then, Faith said in a steady voice, "That's what you want from Xander. His child, given with love. From _my husband. That's why you did what you did in the garden. You threw yourself totally on my mercy to get my permission for this."_

_Willow jerkily nodded, tears beginning to spill from her eyes. "I don't want to hurt you in any way, Faith. I'm begging you for this. If you say no, I promise I'll find someone else."_

_Faith's face was an immobile mask as Willow's sobs filled the air. Dawn and Buffy both looked terrified at the raw emotion present in the gazebo._

_The blonde woman shivered as the dark Slayer slowly turned her head to look at Buffy. Faith's voice was iron-hard as she spoke._

"_He got you back from the dead in that cave. He stood by you for seven years, he lost his eye. You called him the Zeppo, the doughnut gofer."_

_Dawn was frozen in fright as Faith's gaze moved to her._

"_You're a buncha fake memories to him, but he'd walk into Hell and spit into the Devil's face if a hair on your head was in danger."_

_Faith's eyes blazed as she looked at the sobbing witch._

"_I've traced the scars on him from what you did to him at Kingman's Bluff."_

_The furious woman slowly got up from her chair, her entire body tense from restraining the strength that could shatter a mountain. She took a few steps to stand behind Willow, looking down at the bowed head of the wracked woman. Faith bent down to whisper into Willow's left ear._

"_How could I deny a child for you from the finest man I'll ever know?"_


	6. Chapter 6

It had taken a few moments of careful thought, but in the gazebo, they had worked out a safe arrangement. Faith and Buffy were hugging each other, their Slayer strength canceling out each other's crushing potential. Dawn was hugging Buffy with her right arm and Willow was hugging Faith with her left arm. The other arms of the non-Slayers made a half-circle around the warrior women for Willow and Dawn to clasp hands. All of them were content to be in each other's arms for a while now.

Dawn was naturally the first to break the silence of the gloriously happy. "Uh….Wils….Faith….uh…. how….uh….what…."

"What motormouth here is trying to say, how exactly is it going to work?" chortled an extremely amused Buffy. "You really can't be thinking of---"

"_NO!_" yelped a horrified Willow, and then she collapsed against Faith, giggling into the Slayer's ear. That set Faith off, and then the laughter spread to the other two women.

"Oh, Xander's going to be really aggravated at your reaction, Willow," said Dawn, finally catching her breath. "Didn't you ever, you know…."

Willow had a reminiscent smile on her face. "Goddess, in my early teens I really, _really_ wanted to."

"So, why not? Didn't ya ever play doctor or somethin'?" came from a curious Faith.

The redhead gave a rueful chuckle. "Regarding how my parents represented the medical profession, it would have just meant putting Xander on a coach and psychoanalyzing him. No, back then, I was just plain scared. Not just of the sex itself, though that scared me a lot. How do I do it? Am I going to do it right? Or wrong? Is he going to do it wrong? Is it going to hurt? What if it's really disgusting?"

Buffy and Dawn had their own evocative expressions on Willow's thoughts. Fortunately, neither of them were looking at each other at that moment. Faith's expression was more on the bitter side. _Her_ early experiences had been a lot less innocent. Willow noticed this and patted Faith's thigh, giving her a sympathetic look that the Slayer accepted in the spirit of which it was given, smiling crookedly back at Willow.

The witch continued, "But what really scared me back then was what would happen after. Would things change? What would he think about me then? Back then, I just didn't have any other friends besides Jesse and Xander. I was absolutely terrified of losing them, so….I just stayed friends with them."

Willow now gave Buffy a very wry look. "Then _you_ came along, and Xander dived into the Total Crush pool. And so, you remember how our lives changed over the next few years. I guess there were times when Xander and I could have had a chance to sleep together, even without such weird events as the fluke, but….well, it just never happened."

Faith impulsively leaned forward to kiss Willow on her cheek. The witch looked startled when Faith drew her head back, and then Willow rubbed her cheek and sardonically glanced at the Slayer. "Is that an apology for being the one to take Xander's virginity and then throwing him out of your motel room in his underwear?"

The brunette woman grinned. "Kinda. I'm sorry 'bout what you missed, but I'm not so sorry 'bout the way things worked out." Faith slipped her arms loose from Buffy and put them around Willow in the strongest hug she could safely give the witch.

Willow's face was pink as she recovered from Faith's embrace, and it only became pinker as Buffy said in a contemplative tone, "Wils, I think you had a better chance back then than you knew. I remember Xander giving Vamp Willow in her total-slut outfit and you comparing looks."

"Yes, well, it's all in the past. Think of the now, Buffy," muttered the embarrassed woman.

"Does the now include artificial insemination from Alexander LaVelle Harris?" asked Dawn in an increasingly gleeful tone. "Please let me be there when you tell him! Please let me take pictures! Please, please,_ please,_ PUH-LLLLLLEEEEEZZZZE!"

Two days later:

_Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash. _

"Dawn, don't you have enough pictures? I'm going blind over here," complained Buffy from her chair in one of the castle's security conference rooms. Considering what was going to be discussed here, all of the women agreed that they should lure an unsuspecting Xander into the room with the best soundproofing that could easily defeat any eavesdropping baby Slayer's curiosity.

"Awwww, Buffy," whined Dawn. She held her digital camera with one hand while waving at her blank-faced target with her other hand. "He's developing a _really_ great line of drool coming out of the corner of his mouth that's just perfect for this year's Christmas card!"

"Okay, maybe a couple more," granted Buffy, closing her eyes.

_Flash. Flash. Flash._ After a few seconds without any more bright lights going off, Buffy cautiously opened her eyes, seeing Dawn saying with utmost satisfaction while regarding the back of her camera at the screen, "Now _that's_ a keeper!"

The two other women sitting on a sofa against the far wall also gingerly opened their eyes. Willow looked with concern at the man standing motionless in the middle of the room. "Did he even blink when you were taking the pictures? Maybe we should have broken it to him a bit more gently."

"Naw," grunted Faith as she got up off the sofa. "He keeps sayin' he wants things uncomplicated and told to him straight. What could be straighter than me sayin' I want him to give you a kid?"

The Slayer walked over to her husband, curving around Xander to stand in front of the unresponsive man and reaching out with both hands to grab him by the ears to gently shake his head. "Hey, lover, ya payin' attention?"

There was not a flicker of emotion on the man's inert face.

"Hmmm," murmured Faith. "Time to bring out the big guns." She let go of the man's right ear to grab his chin and pull it down to open his mouth. Her left hand went down behind his back to jerk him forward into a close embrace and a lip-locking kiss.

After a few seconds, Xander's sightless eyes registered life again, widening and bulging.

Faith pulled back her head with a popping sound and let go of her husband, who started shuddering uncontrollably. A particularly wicked smirk on her face, Faith turned away and walked back to the sofa, sitting down again next to Willow. Watching Xander gradually regaining control of his limbs, the fascinated witch leaned over to Faith and whispered, "What exactly did you _do to him?"_

"_Cleaned out his ears from the inside."_

_Willow frowned. "That's not physically possible."_

"_Wanna bet? You better ask him before puttin' any money down."_

_Every woman in the room watched Xander's face going through several indescribable expressions before his head turned to look at the pair sitting on the sofa. The rest of his body swiveled to match his head, and he walked over to stand before Willow and Faith, looking down into their faces. Then, Xander knelt down on the floor in front of the sofa between where the two women were seated, the tops of his thighs brushing against the front of the cushions, and he reached out with both hands to take the redhead's left hand and the brunette's right hands. In a quiet voice, Xander said, "Please, tell me everything."_

_Throughout the next several minutes, as the women on the sofa talked with the most important man in their lives, Buffy and Dawn just watched and listened in silence. There were conscious that they were witnesses only and not part of any decision made here today, regardless of the eager attention they were paying to everything occurring over there with the three people: reasons, explanations, and entreating._

_At last, Faith and Willow stopped speaking and they apprehensively awaited Xander's reaction._

_For the last minute or so, the man had not looked them in the eye. He had listened with his head down, chin on his chest, his remaining eye closed. He stayed like this for another endless minute, and then his head came up and he looked piercingly at Faith, then Willow, and back to Faith again. Finally, with a set face, Xander Harris spoke._

"_I want to be the dad."_


	7. Chapter 7

A minute later, all of the Scooby Gang were standing together, and the waterworks were at full blast, with Willow being held by Xander's embracing left arm and sobbing on his chest, Buffy and Dawn at his sides hugging him and weeping with joy, and Faith being firmly held against him with his right arm, her head resting against her husband's upper arm and her prickling eyes warning the dark Slayer she was about to join in. She was Faith, dammit, she didn't do crying. In an effort to ward off bawling, Faith asked gruffly, "Say, lover, what exactly did you mean about bein' the dad?"

Xander lifted up his chin that was resting on the top of Willow's head, and looked down at his wife. "Giles did pretty well back then as a father-figure, but he was usually too busy being Buffy's Watcher. I'm going to be the dad that none of us ever had."

The sound of sniffling died away in the room as every woman thought about Xander's statement and had to admit its truth. None of the people in the room had wanted anything to do with their fathers after, or even before, the Sunnydale disaster. They had brusquely informed their sires of their survival shortly after that event, and they had not had the slightest contact ever since, for very good reasons.

Faith had no idea who her father was, and she doubted that her dead mother had either, or that the woman had even bothered to remember the john any longer than it had taken to spend his money.

The Summers sisters shared the same memories of their father deserting the family to run off with his secretary. Even though Dawn had been created by magic into human form out of the Key, and her false memories had been added well after the abandonment had occurred, it didn't mean they hurt any less.

Willow's father had been emotionally distant from the girl for most of her life. She couldn't remember any affection shown by him towards her since grade school. Her recent lifestyle changes were certainly not going to alter this.

Xander's drunken father had abused him physically and emotionally for years.

Remembering this caused every woman to hug Xander together. A babble of female voices arose, all saying the same thing: "Any kid would be proud to have you as their dad!"

"Thanks, ladies," beamed Xander. "Uh, while we're all like this," the man swept his head including all the women hugging him, "I'd just like to ask just _one_ little question."

Xander looked straight ahead at the wall beyond the small group. "Buffy, Dawn, you're just here to support Willow and Faith, right? Not for any, uh, _other_ reason?"

Buffy tilted up her head to look at Xander's face fixedly staring at the wall. Was he…._blushing_?

Puzzled, the blonde Slayer replied, "Yeah, that's right, why else would we---" Buffy choked off her answer, her own face flaming scarlet as the other women promptly shrieked with laughter, Dawn included, as they all realized that Xander had actually _considered_ more than one woman wanting his child.

Buffy leaned forward to bury her red-hot face against Xander's back, only to discover that part of his body was shaking in hilarity as he joined in the others' mirth. "I'm gonna get you for that, Xander. Oh, am I ever," mumbled the diminutive woman into the man's flannel shirt.

Not that this quieted anyone's amusement. Instead, she got a poke from Dawn, causing Buffy to lift her head to look at her sister's laughing face that had suddenly sobered. Raising her voice to catch everyone's attention, Dawn musingly said, "Buffy, considering our love lives lately, both of us should _really_ consider it."

"_DAWN!_" screamed Buffy, as Xander's head whipped around to stare at Dawn with horror, as the youngest Summers sister cast a serious glance around all of the group.

Then, Dawn opened her mouth in an immense guffaw of, "GOTCHA!"

Eventually, the laughter stopped, maybe just because it physically hurt too much to do it anymore, even for the two women with Slayer endurance.

Xander took advantage of this to say something else that had come to mind. "Guys, we're gonna have to tell the others about this, but….uh….could we do the…._thing_ first? It's the only way me and Willow will have any privacy at all, you know."

The women exchanged glances among themselves, holding a silent discussion apart from the male in the room. Finally, they looked at Xander, and all agreed.

"You bet, lover."

"Absolutely, Xander."

"Our lips are sealed."

"Not a word to anyone."

A week later, the front door to a Scottish fertility clinic closed, cutting off the sounds of thirty Slayers in the parking lot offering cheers, whistles, applause, and obscene suggestions.

In the reception room, a man with a hunted expression on his face lurched over to the counter of the office, his arms heaped with objects, which were now dumped on top of the counter.

The nurse sitting behind the counter calmly examined these items, which included a five-gallon bucket, a thimble, a rubber woman, a disgusting and morally offensive leather cylinder covered with feathers and rhinestones, a DVD of _Debbie Does Truth Or Consequences, and a bottle of Viagra._

_Judging from the deadpan expression shown by the nurse, she was a true professional, or she'd seen worse._

_Glancing at her schedule list, the nurse inquired, "Mr. Alexander Harris for your ten o'clock appointment?"_

_His face buried in his crossed arms resting on the counter, the broken man whimpered._


	8. Chapter 8

Four months later, inside the castle's sitting room, Willow maintained a mostly straight face under Xander's suspicious stare. The slightest quivering of her lips did not give him any significant answers on who had spilled the beans about their arrangement of him making a sperm donation. He glowered around the room, noting every female there was casually avoiding his eye, and thought, _It's a XX chromosome conspiracy, dammit. Just like they won't tell us guys why they have to visit the restroom in packs._

His attention diverted by a cleared throat, Xander looked over to see Giles finish polishing his glasses and putting them back on his face. The older man then addressed the witch. "Are you quite definite about this, Willow? I'm sure Andrew had his….er….positive qualities and a somewhat high level of intellect or he wouldn't have been part of that idiotic group back in Sunnydale, but, well, I still find it difficult to believe he could have seen something we all missed about the---"

"Don't say the name!" savagely snapped Willow.

Giles and the rest of the room regarded with shocked expressions the witch about her outburst. The Englishman hesitantly began again, "Do you mean the name of….Xander's fellow housemate?"

Willow had a mirthless smile on her face. "No, say Andrew any time you like. I meant the other name….who he was talking about." Her eyes swept the room. "Just saying the name means the possibility of….attention."

Buffy and Dawn glanced at each other, with the latter woman then quietly asking Willow, "Do we have any particular reason for not wanting attention?"

The Red Witch closed her eyes and her hair rippled on its own, darkening from its normal auburn color to a deeper red-brown. It now resembled the color of old blood. "Yes. We're going to take it down." After saying that, she opened her eyes. Even though they were still that of a normal human, her eyes would have chilled the spine of anyone who wasn't her friend or family by their ferocious aspect.

Faith, with her own fierce soul, understood at once. "You know a way to do it."

"Oh, yes, now that the idea's been put in my mind," answered Willow, shaking her head ruefully. "I still can't believe Andrew came up with it, when the answer was right there at Sunnydale."

Buffy pointed out, "We were all kinda busy back then, Willow, especially with me screwing up just about anything."

Sympathetic glances were given to the blonde, and then Xander firmly told Buffy, "Hey, Buffmeister, we've all brought and eaten the t-shirt lettered TOTAL IDIOT. As long as we're together to gently inform each other that somebody is about to do a cannonball into a cesspool, we'll have a sanity check for ourselves." The entire room chuckled over his comments. Xander continued with his trademark grin. "So, what's the plan, oh most sneaky and smart scarlet-tressed Scooby?"

Willow slowly smiled and looked at them all. Xander. Buffy. Dawn. Giles. Faith. Every one of them indicated their approval, consent, and agreement in signing on another Scooby Gang headlong charge against the ungodly.

"It's like this…."

Several months later, Lake Sunnydale glimmered in the moonlight. There was barely enough wind to cause ripples on the surface of the new lake, breaking up the reflection of the full moon. That orb, along with starlight, was the only source of light in the vicinity. There was no man-made illumination anywhere; no streetlights, signs, lamps, or headlights were to be seen on the shoreline of the lake, nor in the brooding hills surrounding the body of water that had once been a small California city.

Soon after the disaster that had wiped an entire metropolis off the map, the question arose of what would happen to the area. There was absolutely nothing left of the physical structures -- homes, offices, factories, schools, roads, and everything else created by people -- in the immense pit of the sinkhole. Very cautious exploration of the place by geologists, engineers, and other experts in an effort to find out what had happened (and if it would continue) were suddenly suspended when water began bubbling out of the bottom of the sinkhole. This was seized upon by most of the experts as an easy answer to the mystery of the collapse: a formerly undiscovered underground river or watercourse had undermined the entire area, leading to the subsidence that had destroyed Sunnydale.

Like most of the professionals, the populace at large was quite willing to accept this explanation. The ongoing wrangling between the satisfied and those unhappy with this ready answer soon moved to the most arcane and obscure academic journals where the learned tore each others' reputations to shreds over such questions as why, in a place where water was life, nobody had ever found this mysterious underground river (Sunnydale's water had come from pipelines carrying this from the north of the state and the Colorado River, and a few wells). Or why everybody had hurriedly evacuated the city without any government warning or urging well in advance of the collapse.

Busy in their polite knifework on each others' arguments and claims, the members of academe did not pay the slightest attention to any other means of communication that presumed to enlighten the citizens on just what had occurred. The main media of television and radio had their talking heads for as long as they sensed the story could run, and at that moment when people lost interest, they confirmed, "an underground river made the ground collapse." It was short, simple, and most important of all, easy to understand and remember, which was what the CEOs of the networks hoped for. Now, they could get back to the more profitable practice of reporting the latest scandal of the moment. With _lots_ of advertisements.

Newspapers and news magazines could afford to take their time and present stories with much more information. Unfortunately, there wasn't all that much more news than already presented by their TV competitors, and they couldn't print any sexier pictures of what was basically just a really big hole in the ground being filled with dirty water. Eventually, the stories quickly traveled to the back pages, with the occasional human interest reports of survivors telling their experiences, and then died a quiet death.

Oh, the tabloids were more than willing enough to print stories of "Elvis seen before Sunnydale collapse!" and "Satan's face in dust cloud over Sunnydale sinkhole!," but a minor geological disaster wasn't _that_ interesting to fans of Bat Boy and celebrity cellulite pictures.

No, where you could be sure of getting the truth of what really happened in Sunnydale was naturally (drum roll)….the Internet. The current generation had always wished for a conspiracy of their very own, instead of having to carry on with the Kennedy assassination(s), UFOs, Atlantis, and for the nostalgic, fluoridation. Now, oh joy!, the lunatics, nut-jobs, paranoids, tin-foil beanie wearers, and others whose grasp of reality was a trifle loose were at this point in time the proud possessors of their unique secret plot (for _why_, exactly?), carried out by nefarious agents (anybody, basically), for reprehensible objectives (what would've been done by the freaks themselves if they'd had the money, courage, and ability to talk with any member of the opposite sex without breaking out in hives).

All over America, it was typed out on computer keyboards that Sunnydale had been destroyed by the Men in Black, cyborgs using alien technology stolen from Area 51, followers of Cthulhu dreaming in R'lyeh who were digging a pit to the lowermost depths of hell, and superwomen battling a horde of vampires ("_ANDREW! _Knock it off, or I'll sic Buffy on you!").

In the real, _sane_ world, there were more important things that needed to be worked out. For one, thousands, tens of thousands of people had lost everything. Their homes, possessions, jobs, money, memories -- all items beyond price, even though the insurance companies didn't even bother setting any, claiming the whole thing was an Act of God not covered by any of their policies and taking the phones off the hook at their offices.

Elsewhere, a lot of developers were licking their chops at a chance of getting very cheap California land near the ocean overlooking water. Once they had been assured by their own tame geologists that the sinkhole wasn't going to spread, a lot of pressure was applied in Washington to get the federal land surrounding Sunnydale opened for development. A very straight face was maintained by everyone waving landscaping plans that among the overpriced homes there would be built low-cost housing for Sunnydale survivors unable to find any other place to live. _Absolutely._ Some. A portion. Several. One or two.

In the middle of all this, the President came to the disaster zone. After making a public speech vowing something would be done and posing with some of the more photogenic survivors (to the networks' disappointment, about a dozen really hot-looking babes had left earlier in a battered school bus), the Chief Executive went back to Washington. A couple of days later, without any fanfare, a signed Executive Order was presented to the nation. It contained the following:

Everyone who could prove they had been a resident of Sunnydale 30 days before the collapse would be fully compensated by the government. For those who wondered at once where the money was going to come from, the Executive Order outlined several minor federal agencies that would be reduced in force or entirely eliminated and their budgets transferred to the Sunnydale Fund.

One such agency eliminated was so inconsequential that only its initials appeared on the document, yet in a very secret part of Cheyenne Mountain dealing with deep-space telemetry, a _lot_ of champagne corks were popped over the news that the agency known as the NID was going out of business.

Lastly, the entire region known as the Sunnydale Crater (now half full of water and well on its way to being a lake) and all of the surrounding federal land, every last inch of it, would become a wilderness area. Permanently. Absolutely _no_ development or construction would be permitted, ever. The whole area would go back to what it had been before the first white settlers had moved there over two centuries ago. People could trek there on foot or horseback, but no vehicles of any kind, save for emergency and search/rescue, could travel overland. Not that it mattered, as no trails or roads could be built in the newly named Sunnydale Wilderness Area.

Naturally, there was a lot of yelling from those adversely affected by the Executive Order, including the bureaucracy of the canned agencies and the business interests who had lost a chance for the really big money in the Sunnydale land grab. There _might_ have even been a single individual morally offended by the "government by fiat" actions of the President. Maybe.

In any event, things calmed down very quickly when word was quietly passed that a fuss was allowable, but anybody actually _doing anything to derail the Executive Order was going to be audited for the rest of their lives by the IRS. And their children. And their grandchildren. Yea, unto the seventh generation._

_Still, there were enough sincere protests that a slight compromise was made. It was agreed that, to allow people to visit Lake Sunnydale, there would be built through the new wilderness area a two-lane road leading to a bare-bones scenic overlook on top of a hundred-foot cliff facing the new body of water. It was made clear this was not to be a tourist stop with souvenirs, lake recreation, or park rangers, but rather a quiet place of commemoration and remembrance._

_To most people's surprise, this turned out to be true. Soon after the viewing spot was built, objects began to be placed by the simple railings on the edge of the overlook. They were all physical memories of the former town of Sunnydale: maps, school yearbooks, menus from eating places, old copies of the Sunnydale newspaper, t-shirts and sweatshirts from USC Sunnydale, stuffed toys, and other keepsakes left to show, "yes, we remember."_

_One thing in particular intrigued many people. On the railings of the lookout, people from Sunnydale began taping old photographs or copies of these showing former residents of their hometown. Ninety-plus percent of these photos were posthumous. These weren't of people who had died in the sinkhole; there weren't all that many of these victims since almost everyone evacuated the town before the final collapse. Rather, the pictures were of people of all ages, gender, race, and relation. The only thing these individuals had in common was their disappearance sometime before the town was destroyed, ranging to just before to years past, or their certified death at the same times from such bizarre causes as "death from barbecue fork," "killed by gangs on PCP," or "attacked by wild animals."_

_Sooner or later, most Sunnydale survivors would be asked about this by the curious. Every single one of the former residents, whether or not they had put up photographs, acted the same way while answering the questioners. They would just shrug, and reply, "It's a Sunnydale thing." No 'Daler would ever say anything more._

_In the end, quiet orders were passed through the government that no one was ever to be prevented from leaving any kind of remembrance, and all that was left was to be treated as honored material, to be reverently gathered up at intervals by federal archivists and stored away permanently in government record storage centers._

_And so, people from all over the country and the world would visit the place where a town had vanished into the depths of the earth, stare curiously at the new lake, and view respectfully what had been left by the survivors, and then the observers would leave, usually in a somber mood when departing the overlook that was the only spot allowing them to do all this._

_Unless, of course, you're the most powerful witch in the world. Then you can go where you damn well please._


	9. Chapter 9

"Wils, your hair looks freaky-deaky."

Willow Rosenberg didn't open her eyes at this remark. Instead, she just smiled, keeping her eyelids closed while she stood in her green maternity dress, with one hand caressing her gravid belly in its eighth month. Laughter bubbled in her mind and she joyously used the surge of emotion to begin casting her spell. No one else in the entire world, save those with her, would dare say such a thing to the Red Witch. Family, however, was allowed anything.

As she gathered her power, Willow perceived all that was around her through far more senses than sight, including those never thought possible by humans without magic. She was aware of everything in existence at her position on the new shoreline of Lake Sunnydale at the far side from the scenic overlook miles away. The woman stood a few hundred feet away from the water itself, separated by flat ground that was mostly bare, with a few small boulders and rocks and occasional patches of chaparral stretching away around her.

Even for the witch, there were limits. However, as near as she could determine, this piece of ground was the closest place where it was possible to stay on dry land and be in the general area of the location of the suburban Sunnydale house that once had the address of 1630 Revello Drive.

Sorrow and firm resolve passed over Willow's face, and she added these emotions to the foundation of her spell.

Continuing her magical work, the witch kept rubbing her lower body, where her child was waiting. To bring her daughter into a world without…._it_, that was worth the gamble. She took a deep breath and went on with the ceremony, humor raising the corners of her mouth as a breeze passed over the back of her neck. Ordinarily, her auburn hair would have shielded that part of her body from chills, but the stupendous magical efforts she was carefully crafting required her to take power not just from the entire world, but from….elsewhere at this exact time. It did result in some rather unusual side-effects.

Above her, the full moon shone brightly, benignly unconcerned of its effects on the planet it orbited, including its reflected light, the daily tides, and the fact that every strand of hair on the head of Willow Rosenberg was now extended straight up in the air towards this sphere.

Willow had no problem whatsoever imagining how ridiculous she looked, and she didn't mind the slightest. She quivered in repressed amusement, again pouring that emotion into her work. _Yes, use it all, that which we are going to combat has no defense against humor. My family can certainly contribute their share_, noted Willow in her mind, listening to her loved ones talk among themselves, as the redhead hadn't specifically requested them to be silent during the spellcasting for now.

"Do you think he's gonna have a fatal geekasm?"

"Is that even a word, Xander? Or are you just being hopeful about Andrew?"

"Dawn, I still think I could have used it in our last game of Scrabble until the G-man shot it down. Party-pooper."

"Xander, It wasn't in the Oxford English Dictionary, so I don't care how much you pouted, it still couldn't be used. Besides, when I went to get another cup of tea, it was strange how my tiles had shifted when I came back to show TIGHTAS."

"You can't prove anything, master of tweed."

"Giles, did you really have to pull all those strings? If you could do all that, why can't my shoe allowance be increased?"

"The influence of the International Watchers' Council is not to be used to allow you to collect every piece of footwear in the world, Buffy, but to protect our world from those who would do harm to it. When someone manages to accomplish this by their efforts or suggestions, it is only proper to reward them for this. I will say that Andrew's request for his specific desire was rather….difficult….to accomplish."

"Wow, G-man, four spaces on each side of 'difficult.' C'mon, break down for once from your British reserve and say what you really think."

"Yeah, Giles, let it all out."

"Buffy's right, Giles. It's just us gals and guys here, so you can let it loose."

"_DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING HARD IT WAS TO GET GEORGE LUCAS TO AGREE TO LET ANDREW STAY AT SKYWALKER RANCH FOR A WEEKEND, AND ALSO TO GET HARRISON FORD, MARK HAMILL, CARRIE FISHER, BILLY DEE WILLIAMS, JAMES EARL JONES, NATALIE PORTMAN, EWAN MCGREGOR, HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN, JIMMY SMITS, AND FRANK OZ TO VISIT THERE?! I HAD TO CALL IN EVERY GODDAMN FAVOR THE WATCHERS HAD OWING FOR THE LAST TWENTY YEARS!"_

"_Ooookay, Buffy, Dawn, gather around and let's look at the bet sheet. Lessee, Dawn wins for having him say only two and under obscenities --- that's twenty bucks. Buffy wins forty for him ranting it all in one breath, guy's been around Willow too long. Lady W herself wins the big moolah --- an even c-note --- for him starting to foam at the mouth. Me, I got zilch, not even him pretending to strangle Andrew."_

"_Money, money, money!"_

"_Nobody likes gloating Summers sisters, so both of you quit doing the bump dance."_

"_Bloody pillocks, all of you."_

_With her eyes still closed, Willow suppressed the impulse to explode with laughter, taking all of her delight and using it to finish the spell, with a joyous flourish. It was time._

_The Red Witch lifted up her arms horizontally to her shoulders, with open hands, waiting. She heard her family fall silent and approach her. There was no need to look, even with her mystic vision. Nearly a decade in the Scooby Gang's company meant she could sense everybody there by their auras and aspects of them all._

_The Protector of Man, White Knight, her Brother, stepped to her left side, taking her hand in his large calloused right hand that swallowed up her own. His warm flesh was as familiar as his beloved face, and in their clasp, she felt a small cylinder that was gently pointed at one end. Willow knew without looking that she was holding a yellow crayon._

_The Sage, Ripper, her Father, came up behind her, as allowed for those totally trusted, and laid his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs gently stroking the back of her neck in paternal affection. She drew in a breath through her nose, smelling maleness, tweed, and tea._

_The Key, Brat, her Sister, gently held her right hand as both the youngest and the oldest of them there took her place at Willow's right side. A left hand grasped hers, the size of her own and as woman-soft, created out of energy yet imbued with love freely given, unexpected by all and welcomed into family. Again, Willow felt in her clasp an object, a circular band that she knew was Joyce Summers' wedding ring._

_The Slayer, Thrice-Born, her Sister, stepped in front of her, and as Willow finally opened her eyes, Buffy extended her hands to cup the redhead's face in gentle fondness. The two women stared each other in the eye, and then tears trickled down Willow's cheeks to touch Buffy's fingers. The diminutive blonde then let go of Willow's face, bringing her hands to her own features, and kissed the moisture on her fingers._

_Buffy then smiled directly at Willow, and turned, her back straight, as she walked toward the shoreline of Lake Sunnydale. The witch and the others watched the woman stride away, once again on her way to confront the forces of evil._

_To be more precise, an evil._

_The First Evil._

_Her face and thoughts calm as she headed to battle against the ultimate Big Bad at a steady walk, the only thing odd about Buffy's demeanor was the regularity of her stride, as if she were marching. Or dancing, in time with a specific beat. Her heartbeat._

_And not just hers. In time with the heartbeats of them all. Every one of the two thousand, eight hundred and thirty-six Slayers surrounding the entire lake. All of those who had promptly volunteered for whatever would come when they received the simple message, "The Scooby Gang needs you."_

_Buffy Summers was the proudest she had ever been in her life, knowing her sisters were standing in pairs together around the shoreline, allowing themselves to be used as bait for a being that hated them just as much as it did the five survivors of Sunnydale. The cold logic was that the First Evil would never pass up the chance to leave its sulking exile to return to the place of its defeat, hoping to finally have its revenge in wiping out those victorious against it years ago._

_The blonde's exultation reached deep into her very soul, into her Slayer essence and the worldspell that linked her with every Slayer created by that mystical power, both past and present, and without knowing it, she triggered from her psyche a stupendous burst of immaterial predator ferocity that swept unseen away from the warrior woman. Unseen, but not unfelt, throughout the entire planet._

_Felt by every one of the Slayers around the lake._

_Felt by the Scooby Gang, three of which had once been part of a Slayer, and one who was made from a Slayer._

_Felt by friends, enemies, and neutrals of those who were human, demon, and other, all existing on the globe. Most of which dove for cover, knowing something big was going to happen._

_Felt by the thin line of Slayers around the Hellmouths of the world, who promptly massacred those particularly stupid demons who had thought this was their chance to make trouble while the numbers of the guardians against the dark were dwindled and distracted by whatever was going to take place._

_On the contrary, most of the Slayers there were cursing their luck at losing the draw and having to keep watch over the planet's dimension nexi while their sisters were going to have all the fun. The left-behind Slayers took out all of their bad tempers most thoroughly on their foes, terminating with extreme prejudice into very small bloody chunks any unearthly monster which had the bad luck to be around them at that point in time._

_Felt by two women in the nursery deep inside a Scottish castle._

_Rona drew her short sword from its scabbard, the quiet whisper of the blade coming out not disturbing at all her year-old son sleeping peacefully in his crib, and the woman grinned across the room as she stood by her child._

_Faith Harris grinned back, as she twirled her silver-inlaid pair of khukris that had been a birthday gift from Xander when he had heard her commenting, "That Milla Jovovitch kicks ass." Standing between two babies' beds, the Slayer swept her blades over the pair of cribs containing her small, awake twins._

_Linda and Jesse Harris were resting quietly on their backs, but their eyes followed the glitter of the weapons in their mother's hands, and their infant faces relaxed as they heard the center of their world croon in the same tone she sang them lullabies._

"_Time to Slay."_

_Far away, Buffy was in the exact same savage mood as all of her sisters, and reaching the shoreline, she stopped, looked across the lake that covered her former home, took a deep breath, and uttered at the top of her lungs the invocation that would certainly summon the First Evil, the most dangerous, hateful, vicious, abominable, and prideful of their enemies._

"_HEEEEERE, FIRSTIE, FIRSTIE, FIRSTIE! HEEEEERE, BOY! OOOOOOOOO'S AN ITSY-BITSY FIRSTIE?!"_


	10. Chapter 10

Further up the shoreline of Lake Sunnydale, casual comments were traded back and forth among the Scooby Gang.

"So, G-man, I'm sure back when you were just a Watcher that you would have put something like this down in your journal as, 'The Slayer summoned the demon.' Keeping things totally dull and dry as dust, nothing interesting, sending all your readers to sleep---"

"Really, Xander, the whole point of maintaining a historical record is to ensure documentation of what exactly took place, not to provide entertaining literature."

"That's too bad. I bet if you wrote exactly what she's doing right now, your stuff would sell like hotcakes, Giles."

"Dawn, dear Lord…."

Down by the lake, Buffy had unbuttoned and unzipped her pants, slid her thumbs down between the skin of her hips and the sides of her jeans and panties, and shoved these items of clothing down to her knees while bending over, and still staying in that position, she started making twenty-foot length hops across the ground, all while mooning the entire area.

"Elizabeth Anne Summers! How dare you act in such an unladylike manner!"

Abruptly coming to a halt, Buffy calmly brought up her pants and underwear as she straightened, and then she refastened and adjusted all her clothing to correctness, before turning around to meet the gaze of the person standing before her.

An indignant Joyce Summers stared at her daughter.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA JUST HOW UNIMAGINATIVE YOU ARE?! PLUS, BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT ANGEL, I JUST LOST A SHOE BET WITH MY SISTER!"

The signal of Buffy's venting was followed by Willow closing her eyes and finally casting the spell at the area where the Slayer was standing while yelling at something none of the other members of the Scooby Gang could perceive.

A solid metal sphere twenty feet in radius promptly appeared around Buffy, with the air and the ground surrounding the woman transmuting into steel and other materials with such care and skill that the Slayer's feet didn't move despite now standing on the glassy interior of the sphere, nor did the globe shift in the hollow in the ground it was now resting upon, as solid as rock.

In the total darkness inside the sphere, a mocking voice spoke, sounding exactly like her mother, but in a tone of total contempt that had never come from the woman Buffy Summers had loved more than anyone else in the entire world. "You do remember that I'm immaterial and can move anywhere? There's no cage, either of man or magic, that can hold me."

Buffy smiled toothily in the dark while replying, "It's not a cage, you idiot. It's a trap."

At that, the only living being inside the sphere vanished.

The First Evil froze, and then it began warily looking around the artifact it was currently inside. Its first thought was to leave at once, but suppose that set off the trap? Gingerly, it started examining with all the mystical power it possessed the strange object containing itself, and over the next few moments, it slowly began regaining its arrogance. While this….thing stank of the potent magic of the witch, the sphere seemed to be doing nothing at all. What, then, was the whole point of this?

Buffy appeared out of thin air an arm's-length in front of Willow, so deftly that there was no need to shift her feet or legs to keep her balance. The witch, along with the other three people by her, had her eyes closed, and an instant after the Slayer's arrival, Willow opened her eyes. As she met her friend's uncanny gaze, Buffy remembered what had happened months ago back in the Scottish castle.

*************************************************************************************************

"I could see you when I was a ghost."

Willow sighed, looking around at the blank faces of the others in the castle's sitting room when she began explaining her plan. She tried again. "Remember Halloween, Xander, Buffy? I turned into a spirit when Ethan's spell hit my ghost costume. Incorporeal, intangible, unable to be affected by anything in the material world --- but I could still see you both in your costumes and also everything else in Sunnydale during that night. Which was impossible. Light should have passed through me and my eyes, just as if I were invisible, with me becoming blind. But that didn't happen. I could see --- which meant an insubstantial being did interact with the material world in some way."

Buffy said the first thing she could think of. "But, but, Willow, that was….magic!"

Willow snuggled back into her easy chair and hummed a few bars of a specific Lovin' Spoonful tune, smirking at the blonde woman trying to stifle her giggles when she recognized the song. The redhead looked at the others in the room, her amusement subsiding, as she added, "Trust me, guys, I'm now more than capable of doing things Ethan could only dream about in his eagerness to create chaos."

A flicker of pain went over Giles' features at the mention of his former friend, though there was no sign of his regret in his calm statements. "We're going up against our most powerful enemy, Willow. Are you quite confident about this?"

With a grave expression, Willow gently rubbed her palm against her stomach's slight bulge, and nodded, saying, "Giles, everyone, back then, we just reacted to things --- we danced to _its_ tune. But now, we have time to develop _our_ plans, to use what we've learned. We can think things out, draw on our experiences --- Goddess, in Sunnydale, why didn't we ever remember I was a ghost once? If we'd just put our minds to it, I'm sure we could have come up with something, anything, to actually fight it! Instead of having to wait until years later when an idea came from someone who's a much bigger geek than I ever was, and let me tell you, it's pretty hard to be geekier than putting up posters on your bedroom wall of Steve Jobs, Stephen Hawking, and Albert Einstein!"

The witch then switched her attention to another's confused face, as Xander slowly said, "Uh, Wils, you got _that_ from Andrew's five-minute riff about Sauron and Ringwraiths that caused everybody's eyes in the room to glaze over? He didn't stop talking until the closest Slayer to him, Jessica, grabbed the popcorn bowl out of his lap and overturned it on his head! I agreed with him back then 'cause it made a half-assed sense, and just so he wouldn't repeat it again!"

"Just one sentence he said, actually," smiled Willow at Xander. '"To paraphrase him, 'An immaterial foe must be met with an immaterial weapon.'"

The man muttered, "You gotta spray more saliva and also put on a true-dork expression to do a better impersonation of him, God help us."

"Actually….that's part of it."

"_What?!"_ exclaimed the entire room.

"We're going to ask for help."

Dawn, like the others, stared at the witch in absolute incredulity, and just managed to blurt out, "Help --- what kind --- from who? You can't be talking about the Powers That Be!"

Xander snarled, "Damn straight! Back at Sunnydale, those assholes were probably taking bets on how many of us survived or died! We've done okay without them sticking in their noses since then, probably 'cause Buffy _would_ tear out their ribcage and wear it as a hat, if they ever dared to show up again! If you didn't do something worse to 'em before she had a chance!" The angry man subsided back into the sofa as Faith by his side took his hand in her own and squeezed it in reassurance.

Everyone else in the room unconsciously nodded their heads at Xander's opinion. In all the years since the collapse of the California town, the Sunnydale survivors thankfully had no contact with those manipulative so-called higher beings, despite such events as the disappearance of Angel and his comrades later. Various opinions on the reasons for this included Xander's bloodthirsty suggestion, the unlikely possibility that the Scooby Gang had fulfilled their destinies, or that the PTB were just waiting for some other upcoming disaster to start treating the people in the room as puppets again.

Not even Willow, with all her immense mystic power, knew the correct answer to that, and the witch was more than content to leave it alone. Which was why she shook her head at the others' error. "I'm not talking about those jerks. Whatever they might think, they're not the be-all and end-all in this universe. No, I meant help from….elsewhere. Beyond. Higher."

"If you're talkin' 'bout who I'm thinkin', what makes ya think we're gonna get help?" quavered Faith, shivering a little. Without thinking about it, she squeezed again Xander's hand for comfort and relaxed a fraction as he squeezed back, and leaned against her. Faith put her head against Xander's shoulder and worriedly stared at the witch.

Willow gave them all a beatific smile and quietly said, "We've already had it." At their bewildered expressions, she continued, "Look at us all now, and think about what we all did to each other back then. All the pain and the tragedies….but we got past it, to become a family. We fought, sacrificed, and won. All by using emotions and feelings that couldn't be touched or seen. Love. Hope. Forgiveness. Friendship. Our enemy has his own weapons that are just as insubstantial: Fear. Dissension. Doubt. Suspicion. They can be fought against, and we've done it. Now, we're going to put up all we have, and use our powers to go up against something that has its own adversary, that I'm sure already helped us."

As she looked at her friends' faces with their looks of dawning wonder and expectation, Willow continued, "At the very least, we can ask. We have that right, as do all humans on this world. And even if nothing comes from it, well, it can't hurt, and it might help, when we start what Xander is gonna call a really KICK-ASS spell!"

At the end of Willow's speech that finished with a wild whoop, the Scooby Gang had their faces shining with the light of coming battle. As the redhead continued explaining her plan, they listened intently, though at the conclusion, Buffy and Faith, with their Slayer hearing, glanced curiously at each other at overhearing Dawn softly muttering something about the power of love and the power of arithmetic….

*************************************************************************************************

By Lake Sunnydale, staring straight at the Slayer, eyes of pure green, solid colored with no sign of human iris or pupil, eyes that bore the power of the entire planet examined the diminutive woman before her, and the Red Witch opened her mouth and murmured in the whisper of all growing life as manifested by her child in her womb, "_Speak._"

The man to the right of Buffy opened his right eye, now pure brown, and said in a voice holding the clash of weapons defending loved ones, "_Protect_."

Looking over Willow's head, the Watcher's pure gray eyes opened, and from his lips came the soft susurration of all the pages sweeping open of every book ever created that formed, "_Know_."

Smiling, Dawn bestowed on her sister both a look from her pure sea-green eyes and a single word chiming with the music of the cosmos, "_Open_."

Totally without fear, Buffy reached out to place her hands on Willow's shoulders, her thumbs touching the sides of Giles' hands, as Xander and Dawn brought their free hands around to place these on the Slayers' own shoulders. The hazel eyes of the California girl remained unchanged, as someone who had known heaven tilted back her head, casting her gaze upwards, to entreat, "Please."

The appeal was heard, and answered.

Inside the sphere, a puzzled First Evil ignored the faintest trace of magic that subtly changed the inner mirrored glass into….absolute perfection. The inside of the globe was now an exact round solid figure well past impossibility without even the tug of gravity distorting it, the surface of the interior's mirror was now smoother than humanity could polish it down to the atomic level and beyond, and all of its substance was now totally pure, with no traces of unwanted material to ruin things. Uncontaminated. Untainted.

Yet, the most powerful part of the spell was something as intangible as the monster inside it, and nothing would have come of the efforts of the Scooby Gang if they hadn't shown this in their work and dedication, in their lives and beliefs, in their love and devotion to each other.

Loyalty. Trust. Faith.

Instantly, the eyes of every human there blazed pure white, and from their throats came words of power that shuddered every molecule of their bodies.

"FIAT LUX!"

Let there be light.

And this came to pass.

Next to the fiend inside Willow's spell construct, much faster than it could react, appeared a speck of the First Light, the Light of Creation.

Several months before this, all while he crammed popcorn into his mouth, Andrew had cheerfully burbled, "….immaterial, right? But what would happen (_crunch_) if you had a totally honkin' light inside a perfect mirror holding the First Evil? There's a really, really cool video on Youtube showing weird to the max when it was tried, and well (_munch_), I mean, that, um, guy's --- thing's connected to vampires, right?, and they can't been seen in mirrors, and, uh (_gulp_), they go right into ashes in the slightest sunlight, which can't be burning them all that much, maybe it's got to do with photons being both a wave and a particle, which is just as impossible as that Big Bad, and you know, I bet a Slayer could kick a Nazgul's butt 'cause like the book says, they're not a man or….HEY!" It all ended with the Scooby Gang coming back to what remained of Sunnydale after listening to a man who had casually tossed off a suggestion just before he was forced into wearing an item of cookery as a hat. Not that the group named after a cartoon dog hadn't before tried just as ridiculous strategies that, well, had worked. Leading an independent observer to contemplate the possibility of some other….being subtly on their side.

What now existed inside the interior of the sphere after the celestial illumination materialized, to be reflected to infinity, as it bounced off the whole of the globe, was well past the comprehension of humans, save for a simple fact: All was revealed. Nothing could be hidden, as the First Evil was shown exactly in a single moment of frozen time what the ungodly could not bear, the totality of its emptiness and non-being. An insubstantial creature met something just as non-material as itself, yet there was far more power in a truth brought to the monster than every bit of its evil.

It was nothing. A null, a nonentity, a void in creation, nil, something that didn't exist….and it now knew this.

With this understanding came….an ending. The First Evil no longer was, passing out of existence.

Without the slightest disturbance, the entire universe shifted to fill in the infinitesimal part of the cosmos that had once been occupied by a now-vanished foul entity.

The large metal sphere resting on the shoreline of a new lake now disappeared like a popped soap bubble, leaving behind just a concave depression in the ground that would be filled in during the next winter rains. It was the only memorial a quickly-forgotten monster would ever receive.

Right after the sphere vanished, the Scooby Gang shuddered and broke apart, staggering on their feet, as every one of them stared at each other with their now-normal eyes, and spoke in unison, "_Gone!"_

_At that instant, every human on earth felt a moment's joy. Danger, iniquity, sorrow, wickedness, even the evil men could do still existed and must be dealt with, but a bit of humanity's soul was now cleansed._

_Others were not pleased by this. At all._

_From every one of the hell dimensions, and even from those calling themselves on the side of good that had plans for the First Evil, came screams of rage and wrath at those who had dared this. Vengeance and revenge was plotted, with all the exact minuscule beings causing such trouble about to undergo absolute torment beyond anyone's measure--_

_NO._

_The calm certainty that rang around the whole of existence came from the One Above All, freezing beings of lesser power into immobility._

_FAIRLY WON WAS THE CONFLICT. CHOICES WERE MADE, THE SUMMONS ANSWERED, AND THE WARNING UNHEEDED. FREE WILL, MY GIFT TO ALL, RULED, AND TO THE VICTORS MY PROTECTION._

_There was now more than a hint of doom for those defying, and also….amusement._

_LEAVE THE SCOOBY GANG ALONE._

_Far below, on the material plane of existence, Xander felt an unexpected surge of elation, and he happily announced, "Well, we've won, and now it's time for the traditional post-Big Bad party." He grinned at his family, and held out his hands, while continuing. _

"_Wanna dance, pretty ladies?"_

_The bright moon looked down to the shores of Lake Sunnydale to observe the following:_

_Willow waddled around, shrieking with glee, as her Xander-shaped friend goofily danced in circles around her, stopping after every few absurd steps to drop down and dart towards his bestest bud in a crouching Groucho Marx lope to bestow tummy-smooches on her protruding belly._

_Buffy bounced and strutted around her Sunnydale comrades in a highly risible cheerleader routine, shaking in her hands imaginary pom-poms and performing enthusiastic high kicks, flips, somersaults, and mid-air splits, all of which would have caused a total riot if presented to any stadium audience._

_Giles and Dawn stalked past, their limbs flashing, as they performed a truly wicked tango that Gomez and Morticia Addams would have considered a trifle extreme._

_Finally, all of the Scooby Gang, their laughter raising as high as the heavens, joined together under the light of the full moon, to do the Snoopy Dance._


End file.
